Politics & Media

Nov 29, 2018, 05:55AM

The Media’s Partially Responsible For Trump Derangement Syndrome

The recent photo of the children on the Mexican border who were near a tear gas canister that border guards had fired into an unruly, rock-throwing crowd predictably provoked a cacophony of outrage from the Left. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said, “That’s not what America should be.” One pundit, actor George Takei, asserted that, unquestionably, Donald Trump was testing the waters to see what he could get away with in the future. First gas children and then what? Shoot them? Such hyperbole is a prime example of the psychological condition known as Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), a malaise marked by constant hyperventilation over the words and acts of our current president.

TDS sufferers often lack awareness that they have the disorder, believing their agitated mental state and reactions to current events are a normal response to a fascist whose vile deeds are without precedent. They’re also not cognizant of one of its major causes—the mainstream media. The viral photo of the gassed children is a case in point. Amid the outrage, the Washington Times reported, based on DHS data it accessed, that “U.S. Customs and Border Protection has used 2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile, or CS, since 2010, and deployed it 26 times in fiscal 2012 and 27 times in 2013.” 2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile’s the defining ingredient in tear gas. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told CNN when speaking about the recent tear gas usage, “This policy that we use was an Obama-written policy and it was used in 2013 at the same port of entry.” Perhaps it wasn’t used against children then, but a parent can’t participate in a violent attempt to storm the border of a foreign nation accompanied by children, no matter how harsh life in Guatemala may be.

The media that TDR victims consume didn’t report all the border tear-gassing that happened under Obama because they’d taken it upon themselves to protect him. His status as America’s first black president merited him special status. People reacted to the recent tear-gassing as if only Trump would do it, because the MSM had deprived them of a frame of reference. Refusing to cover certain news stories is the most effective tactic the media employs to distort reality because it’s subtle. In this case, the media downplayed the fact that the border-stormers were throwing rocks at U.S. law enforcement personnel, which is an odd way of attempting to claim refugee status in a foreign country.

The liberal rage over Trump’s incessant gaslighting’s exacerbated by their ignorance of Obama’s own gaslighting. The former president said, on 36 separate occasions, that if you liked your insurance plan you could keep it after Obamacare passed—sometimes adding “period” for emphasis. When this turned out to be untrue, an on-the-defensive Obama responded that what he’d been saying all along was you can keep it “if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.” But the videotape doesn’t lie.

The Democrats are upset that Trump demands personal loyalty from his subordinates, as opposed to loyalty to the nation, yet former attorney general Eric Holder said in 2013, “I’m still the President’s wing-man, so I’m there with my boy.” That’s an inappropriate statement for an AG to make—the DOJ doesn’t exist to do the president’s bidding—and you can imagine the reaction if Jeff Sessions had made such a claim about Trump. Holder’s remarks can raise suspicion about Obama claiming executive privilege to cover him from releasing Fast and Furious documents sought by House investigators, but the media never made much of them. It’s doubtful that many Democrats even know Holder said that, but Republicans sure do.

New York Times op-ed colunist David Leonhardt wrote that Trump Derangement Syndrome doesn’t exist—it’s a myth. The single piece of evidence he offered is that the Democrats still haven’t pushed for impeachment, despite ample evidence Trump’s broken the law. Talk about lame reasoning. You’d expect a Times writer to understand that TDS doesn’t refer to the political tactics of less than 200 Democrats in the House of Representatives but, then again, maybe those days have passed.

What the oblivious Leonhardt misses is that TDR’s something that afflicts people such as Margery Eagan, who wrote a story for The Boston Globe about how Trump has “wormed his way” into her brain. Eagan seems to know many other TDS sufferers. She writes about one whose dentist told him he needed to wear a bite guard because he was clenching his teeth while sleeping, and another—a mother of two—who got arrested for screaming at Trump supporters and has since sought out counseling and started going to church for the first time. Another of Eagan’s acquaintances said she eats a lot more to contain her Trump-induced jitters, but that mostly she “just panics.”

The media signaled that it had Obama’s back even before he was elected. After the Benghazi attack, Republicans accused him of waiting 14 days before calling it a terrorist attack. In fact, after the strike on government facilities in Libya, Obama repeatedly called it “an act of terror,” a weaker designation than “terrorist attack.” When Mitt Romney called him on this in their 2012 debate, debate moderator and former CNN host Candy Crowley bailed Obama out, telling Romney he was wrong. Crowley was later forced to apologize when her error was revealed.

Trump Derangement is real. Those with the malady magnify the problem by consuming only left-leaning media and banding together inside the social media bubbles. The media’s created a class of naive people by granting softball coverage to the previous president for eight years. Making Obama look like an angel makes Trump look even more like a monster. The President’s often petty and child-like. He’s essentially amoral, lacking the slightest trace of class. He’s repulsive. If Trump lasts eight years, he’s going to do serious damage to the collective mental health of Americans. The media will have aided him.

Discussion

In a way, it could be said that Trump will mess up your head if you let him. Or if you invite him in. The sufferers of TDS NEED to be incandescently outraged. Thus, anything Trump does must be awful. Thus, everything Trump does is awful.
Not sure why "class" is mentioned. Didn't get Reagan, Bush, Bush, or Romney much respect. It did let their enemies do more damage, though.